


The Life You Could Lead

by ryyves



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s02e13 The Last Dragonlord, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2019-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:40:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21881983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryyves/pseuds/ryyves
Summary: Merlin at the scene of his father's death.
Relationships: Merlin & Balinor
Comments: 3
Kudos: 28





	The Life You Could Lead

In the life you could lead, he stands beside your mother at the well. They laugh, and the both of them push their hair back as they lean in to kiss, spilling well-water over their boots. The sun is soft in the cloudy sky and Ealdor parts around them, perfect and whole in the hollow slats between your ribs. You watch through the window of a house the carpenter had refitted with a double bed for your parents. If every second you stare could replace a minute of loneliness, an hour, a day, then it doesn’t matter how many years you didn’t know your father.

In the life you could lead, you pass him sickles in the fields and he passes you grain. You make dinner and he says _Where’d you learn to cook like this? _Says _Thought I’d never taste good food again. _The three of you laugh and the sky is orange and you have never known simple happiness like this.

No one is afraid of you here, neither of your magic nor his. Sometimes, in the life you could lead, you forget magic, and you are an ordinary farmboy, but mostly, magic is somewhere you can feel safe. Someone understands and you are not alone anymore.

You sit on the floor and your father at the dinner table, and you trot the little wooden dragon he carved for you, the second day you knew him, across the floor. Somehow you have to make up for a fatherless lifetime, to be the boy he missed out on, to give him the child and the almost-man alike. You have your book and he has decades of experience, words you never dreamed existed. He shows you spells and you watch him, spellbound. You watch his eyes turn gold, and they are the most precious thing you have ever seen. Forget Camelot, forget its vaults and its chambers, its stonework and its golden crowns; you have a man who has stared into the hearts of dragons and triumphed.

The sun sets and your father comes to help you with the dishes, scrubs the clothes even though, to most of the village, that is a woman’s job. You are both humbled by grueling circumstance. You share the work so your mother doesn’t have to, and he pats your shoulders, strokes your hair, with sudsy fingers. It is easy, having a father, so easy you don’t know how you managed before.

Your mother smiles more, at him or at you or walking between the fields. She is less afraid, doesn’t glance around every corner before turning or peer through the curtains before opening the door.

This is what you could have, if you are careful.

But this is not the life you are leading.

In the life you lead, he is crying in your arms, your breath and his breath so heavy they could be the only sounds left at the end of the world. Beyond you the clanging of swordmetal, beyond you Arthur screaming, foreign voices which are not voices at all but the trickle of riverwater. You followed the river to him and this is where it brings you, in a current as heavy as his body, in shock, hitting yours. The weight of him brings you to your knees. It takes all your strength to keep his shoulders from slamming against battle-scuffed earth.

There could be legions around you but the world is slow and sideways, the leaves so green they are cloying and the sky dark as thunder, his blood in your nose, and you would not see them. You have seen blood before, smelled it, tasted it from your body and Arthur’s, but it is all you can do to keep your teeth clenched, to keep horror from coming out like bile. You keep your eyes on his face, not on the blood dripping down his abdomen, soaking your shirtsleeves. If you look away, he will be dead.

You saw your mother die, once, before she died, and you gave your life to get her back. You have seen hundreds whose names you never knew die since then. This time, it is not your fault, but it might as well be.

In the life you lead, the magic comes out of you like a horse bolting at a sudden noise. The soldier’s hand releases the sword and he slams, dead, against a tree. You hear his neck snap and feel nothing.

In the life you lead, you lower your father to the ground on knees set to buckle. Or rather: he falls, and you fall with him.

In the life you could lead the sword misses him, nicks him, anything but plunges straight through.

_Please._

But he looks up at you with irises flicking between your left eye and your right, your chin, the sky above your head. The pain makes him hazy, makes simple focus Herculean. If his eyes close, you know they will not open.

He says, _I see you have your father’s talent, _and it is unintelligible, voice rough and slurred, but proud. You feel it, if you don’t hear it.

_Please, _you are saying. You do not know how many times you say it, if you say it at all, if your mouth is opening.

He tells you how to kill the dragon. He tells you quick; you do not have much time. Each breath comes out of him like a gasp. He says, _You are my son, _and it is like all your ribs being broken at once. If you have a minute with him, before he is gone, it will be a miracle. You think you scream but all that comes out is a tremor. You wanted it passed down to you, the knowledge of the Dragonlord, from father to son, but not like this.

_I can’t do this, _you manage. You have faced this dragon before and it wants your blood.

_I’ve seen enough of you to know that you will make me proud. _The intensity in his voice grows with each syllable. His hair dark and matted around his face, his eyes a brown you have not inherited. You hold him and feel every shallow breath. You hold him and his life sits somewhere between your palms and you are promising, like you have promised a thousand times, that you will fix this. _I can save you. _It does not matter how. And if only one promise matters, it should be this one. For your mother, if not for you. If not for her, for your father. For the loneliest nineteen years of your life, and his, for the ghost in your little shack in the middle of Ealdor, for the footprints you would sometimes make in the dirt leading to your window to pretend he was coming home.

And he’s coming home. You are bringing him home. Past the Great Dragon, Kilgharrah, past the city of Camelot and the realm of Albion, on steeds with simple saddles who will find their own ways back. In the life you could lead, he is doing daily things like cleaving chicken meat and repairing thatch, like kissing your mother and hugging you.

Your skin aches from the absence, because in the life you lead, the wound is beneath his diaphragm, shuddering against your side with his breathing, and he is grimacing with teeth white despite years in seclusion. There is dirt all over his face but his eyes are clear and dark and on you. You are so close your noses almost touch. You are holding him up, his head shaking with the effort of staying upright, of holding your eyes.

You nod and can’t stop. You nod and the weight of it almost breaks your spine. I’ll make you proud, you want to say, but your jaw won’t stop shaking.

The backs of his fingers, halting, touch your cheek, and you close your eyes. The hot thing on your cheek reaches the corner of your mouth, and your ragged breath rips your ribs apart. And when his head falls back, eyes staring heavenward, the tension leaving his shoulders in a final exhale, your voice comes back in a wrenching sob. His body is so heavy in your arms, his eyes hollow. For a day, you had him, a father. You have never seen a person so empty before.

And then Arthur is on the ground beside you, his sword driven into the dirt, his cry one of frustration and despair, but not the loss you know. You will come home at Arthur’s side, but you will come home alone.

You wipe your tears before Arthur sees them. You leave your father’s body on the ground. In the life you lead, you stand up, legs wobbling. You stand up and your father lies there on the ground, his limbs uncanny and broken, and it takes all your strength to look at Arthur.

Somewhere beyond the forest, Camelot. Somewhere beyond the forest a room that you stand in the back of and cry. Your wet knuckles brush against your lips; your wet eyes follow Arthur as he lays out the battle plan.

There is someone else to hold you, to pull the blankets close around your shoulders, to stroke your hair and say, _My boy. _Someone else to prepare breakfast with you, to laugh at the dinner table, to catch your worried looks, your furies, your disguised tears. Someone who is waiting for you to come home.

In the life you lead, you stand up. So stand up.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Stephen King in Pet Sematary for showing me this was possible.


End file.
